Anturis Raises $2 Million More To Grow Its IT-Monitoring Service For SMBs In The US

This morning Anturis announced that it has raised a $2 million Series A round of funding. The company, focused on providing IT-monitoring services to small and medium-scale businesses, raised the new cash from Runa Capital and VEB Innovations. The two groups co-led the financing.

In case you are keeping score of Russian startups, Serguei Beloussov, who is a partner at Runa Capital, and founded Parallels, was also an early founder of Anturis. So, that it raised more from Runa is hardly surprising.

Anturis, as TechCrunch’s Alex Williams reported earlier this year, is an “IT-monitoring service for the small business market,” that wants to provide “service that fits between enterprise software and open source offerings.” In practice that means that Anturis provides monitoring and notification technology to companies, akin to what Nagios offers.

Given its SMB and mid-size focus, Anturis is priced modestly, with its most expensive offering topping the charts at under $100 per month.

Why did it raise new money? The company has its sights on the United States market, where it has recently hired a business development lead, to head its desired growth in the country. Its development team remains housed in Moscow. Some of its new funds will be spent on marketing in the United States, unsurprisingly. The company called its business development hire the “start” of its U.S.-based entity.

On the product front, Anturis’s integration with CPanel is currently in beta. The company works to release updates on a bi-monthly basis, so that functionality should be locked down soon.

Of course, $2 million is a smaller-than-normal raise in the current market, but with its development team in Russia, the company could have lower personnel costs than other similar firms based in the United States. If the company intends on spending a firm chunk of its raise on marketing in the United States, a media market that can skew expensive, the amount it will retain to grow its team will be modest. As such, provided it meets its revenue targets, I would not be surprised to see the company raise more capital shortly. Perhaps from U.S.-based investors, if it wants stronger roots in this country.

Presuming that the firm isn’t yet profitable, it won’t be able to hire extensively in the United States without more capital.

Given marginally profitable price points (I confirmed that with the company), Anturis is in a fun place for a company of its size: A functional business model attached to fresh cash. It’s now a question of whether Anturis can execute. We’ll see.

Update: An earlier version of this post indicated that Serguei Beloussov had left Runa Capital, which was incorrect. The post has been corrected. Also, Beloussov provided comment to TechCrunch regarding the funding, stating that “Anturis offers a solution that doesn’t require a major investment in IT resources.” It’s not surprising that he’s a fan, of course.